Protocol
by Lynse
Summary: The world has changed since the Merge. Ghosts-threats-are everywhere, the Guys in White are in control, and trust is a risk when friends can so easily become foes. Dystopian AU (courtesy of competent, world-merging GiW)
1. Jazz

A/N: An AU in which the Guys in White are competent, to the point that they destroy the Ghost Zone, banishing ghosts to this plane of existence and using the resulting fear to overthrow the government and otherwise create a dystopia. This is just a fraction of the universe that's in my head, so if there's interest, I might flesh it out through this story, scene by non-chronological scene. Standard disclaimers apply.

* * *

_Logically, she knew she had to take the shot, but she wasn't sure she could bring herself to do it._

* * *

"Just take the shot. Jazz, please, they'll know if you don't, and they'll hurt you."

He was right, of course, they would, and she'd be punished, slated for programming, and they'd take away her will and wash her clean. Wash her white.

Just like they'd been trying to do to everyone who had resisted since the Merge.

Danny hadn't told her the little he'd known of the plans of the Guys in White at the time, but she was certain he hadn't known that this was coming. He'd have asked for her help if he had. Even Vlad—

But Vlad hadn't known the truth, either. Even when he'd been playing at mayor, he'd kept the GiW at arms' distance. He'd been careful to protect his secret. And, whether it had been his intention or not, he'd been careful to protect the Ghost Zone and all its inhabitants.

But the Guys in White saw ghosts as a threat, and they had never abandoned their effort to destroy the Ghost Zone. Danny had told her afterwards that he'd thought this world would cease to exist if the Ghost Zone were destroyed, but it hadn't. Reality had…wobbled, instead, as it had struggled to absorb its mirror, and now ghosts were a reality no one could deny.

Ghosts were a reality, their threat indisputable, and the Guys in White were more powerful than ever, given how they'd seized control of the government after declaring a national state of emergency.

She'd never realized they had factions in other countries, too.

She'd never thought she'd be trying to defend her little brother against a global threat.

She'd never thought she'd fail this miserably.

"It's okay," Danny said. He made no move to avoid her, even though the half-demolished shell of a building on his left wouldn't stop him any more than the empty air on his right. He knew the risks they'd already taken and how much greater those consequences would be for her if he ran now. He thought it was worth staying. She didn't. She knew what would happen if this went wrong, if they didn't play it just right. "Just take the shot."

It wasn't okay. It wouldn't be okay either way. But the cameras were on them, and Jazz couldn't lower her gun. She had to keep pretending. Pretending that she thought her brother an abomination, that breathing in the choking dust of their ruined world was a necessary stepping stone as they remade it from the ashes of the Merge, that she was on the right side of this because she stood with the Guys in White.

"You were supposed to be gone by now," she whispered. Technus had knocked out the audio in this sector, but she couldn't be certain that it was still off. Tucker had already alerted them that he'd been forced to restore visual, and if too many others were watching, he couldn't take too long fixing the audio without it being suspicious.

He was a plant, pretending to work for the Guys in White, just as she was. They were fighting from within, bolstering the resistance.

But they were losing.

And Danny was supposed to have left this sector long behind, and he hadn't, and her team would be expecting her to report in, and she'd already be in trouble for not staying with her partner as protocol demanded.

They'd be suspicious of another glitch in her suit's camera, in another fault in her gun, and she'd spent too long on the training course under careful scrutiny to claim bad aim. With the sun directly overhead, she couldn't even claim that as an excuse—not that the visor in her government-issued helmet made that excuse viable, anyway.

Danny smiled at her. "We need you on the inside. Besides, I'll recover."

"Not fast enough," Jazz countered. "If I fire, there'll be a search. You won't make it past the shielding, especially not now that they know who you are."

Danny wasn't a shapeshifter, and now that his identity wasn't a secret, he couldn't hide.

He was being hunted.

By people who cared less about him than she did.

"You can't let me go. It'll blow your cover."

Her hesitation was already endangering it, but— "Fight me."

"What?"

"Fight me. I'll call for help, fire and miss, and then you can fly, Danny. Hide. Dive into the earth if you have to to avoid the ecto-pulses, but just _hide_." It was the only thing she could think of. He was too valuable to risk, but he was right, too: so was she. "It won't be the first time we've had to pretend to fight."

"We were more evenly matched before," Danny said, but he let his hands light up green in preparation of sending a ghost ray her way. He wasn't wrong, of course. That had been years ago. She'd been wearing the Fenton Ecto-Skeleton, and he'd been weaker than he was now.

"If you pull your punches," she said quietly, "they'll just think it was out of some lasting vestige of misguided affection. From Before."

He nodded, and then he shifted his stance, and she shifted hers, and she aimed for his shoulder knowing he'd feint right before swinging left and she'd miss and—

Red light engulfed Danny, and all Jazz could hear was his scream.

He dropped.

His screams cut off as he crashed into the ground, but they still echoed in her ears.

Jazz couldn't breathe, but her eyes met Sam's. Sam's lip curled before she picked her way across the wreckage. "You broke protocol." Sam's voice was cold. Hard. Cruel. "You let that ghost separate us and then you pursued without waiting for backup." She reached Danny and kicked him in the side, hard. Jazz winced. "Still animate. Come on. Let's secure it."

Jazz took one wooden step forward. Then another. And another.

Her reluctance wasn't missed by Sam, who sent another sharp look her way after she snapped the Eco-Cuffs onto Danny. "Remember your allegiances, Fenton," she hissed. "I saw you hesitate. Don't think I won't report you if this one conveniently gets away before we get back to base."

"I know," Jazz murmured. She knew the risks of what she was doing. She knew what she was fighting for, who she was fighting for, and why.

Sam had been captured when a rebel stronghold had fallen two months ago, and her loyalties had been washed away, replaced with the lie that had been fed to the rest of the world. Jazz had thought requesting her as a partner would enable her to keep an eye on Sam, but it was Sam who was watching her, and Jazz couldn't guess how long she'd stay silent about what she'd already seen.


	2. Tucker

A/N: Shhh, I know it's not in chronological order, but it's not going to be. (Also, I haven't finished the scene where Danny gets dragged back yet.)

* * *

_He had to go in, but knowing that didn't make it any easier—or take away the risks._

* * *

"You have to go in," Danny said. "Please. Jazz is smart, but she doesn't know half this stuff. You do. We need you on the inside."

Tucker bit his lip. "Dude, this isn't cool. They know we're friends. They're gonna know I was working with you. They aren't going to expect me to stop."

"Then we give them a fight," Sam suggested. "Something big. Showy. Convince them of your loyalties that way."

Tucker pulled a face. "We can't risk _not_ convincing them, though. If they don't think I'm legit, they'll just wash me. Wipe away any pesky sympathies and whatever else." He wasn't sure what the Guys in White were doing to brainwash people, but he knew it was effective. They all did.

His words sobered the other two. It was only the three of them in this meeting, huddled in an old outpost of what had once been the lobby of Val's apartment building in Elmerton. It wasn't Amity Park, but the ghosts had never made much of a distinction between the two, and they knew its streets from fights long past. From Before.

It was familiar ground, but it wasn't something the Guys in White expected them to know as well as they did. They weren't safe here, exactly—the GiW even knew Danny was Phantom—but this was safer than other places. Besides, the Box Ghost had said he'd cause a distraction, and Pandora had let him borrow her box. It would buy them time, if only because the GiW wouldn't—shouldn't—be expecting a hydra to turn up.

"Then we convince them you're a traitor to our side," Sam said.

Tucker and Danny stared at her. "What?" they asked in unison.

"We can't risk them washing you. We can't lose you. But they won't wash you if they think you have valuable information that might be lost in the process."

"No, they'll just _torture_ me! Newsflash, Sam. That's not better." Anyone the GiW washed white was 'freed' from their past loyalties. The cleansing washed away all their dirty little secrets that helped them hold onto the promise of fixing this mess of a world, but it could also affect memories associated with those loyalties. He wasn't too sure whether it destroyed them completely or just made them too unreliable to count on when it came to information extraction, but if he was labelled a sympathiser, a rebel, it wouldn't matter. They had no qualms about torturing someone until they saw the error of their ways and then begged to be cleansed by them, washed and returned to society. It was sickening but effective. Most people didn't realize their methods, and since they'd begun hammering areas where the information got out, those in the rebellion weren't keen on spreading it around, either, unless they were already on the move.

It was hindering the whole recruiting process, exactly as the Guys in White wanted.

Sam punched him in the arm. "They won't need to torture you if you give up the information willingly."

"What?" he repeated. That sounded entirely too much like actually being a traitor, and the rebellion was too small to afford that. Sure, Danny had made a truce with most of the ghosts easily enough; most of them didn't want to leave Earth, and of those that remained behind, few thought so much of themselves that they believed they could defeat the Guys in White alone. At least, few did after rumours got out about how the first ones had been torn apart, and almost none had tried it since the release of that footage. But the ghosts were more of a hindrance than a help in populated areas, where citizens had been issued basic ghost hunting tech that included the equivalent of Fenton Finders meant to ferret them all out, and it took flesh and blood humans to break through ghost shields and convince others to join their cause.

Just last week, he'd come across a pair of kids not much younger than he was, scavenging for food. He wasn't sure how they'd ended up outside the cities, but he hadn't been about to ask at the time. Instead, he'd told them that they didn't have to live like this, that it didn't have to be this way, that they could change things if they just fought back—

The older one had pegged him as a rebel right away. Threatened to report him and reap the reward. Made it clear he wasn't afraid to fight if it would get him some proof that the report wasn't a false one, that it was an actual lead on the location of the rebels, if not a captured rebel himself.

It was the younger brother who'd asked questions. Who'd given Tucker a chance to explain the truth. Who'd convinced his brother to join the rebel cause, for a place to belong if nothing else. Walker had vetted and approved both of them at the way station. They hadn't been threats, just kids who'd needed help to survive, who'd been willing to do anything for it. He'd helped give them a purpose.

He…he didn't want to throw all that away.

"Tell them something they don't know," Sam said slowly. "Something real. Just something small to start. Let them check it out and confirm it. And then give them something else. And then, when they demand something bigger, give them that, too. It'll hurt us, but we'll be stronger in the end. They won't be surprised that your information is less reliable after the third attack—they have to know we'll be adjusting our plans—but they won't be willing to wash you, either. You might know something they don't realize is valuable, that _you_ don't realize is valuable, and they won't want to lose that."

Tucker shook his head. "They'll want names."

"They have most of our names," Danny pointed out. "Between the death registration and the last census—"

"Then they'll want locations!"

"Yeah, they will, and you'll have to give some of them up." Sam crossed her arms. "I said this'll hurt us. It's not believable if it doesn't hurt us. But you can't chicken out, either. If you lie, it won't work, and they'll wash you white, and then this will have been for nothing. Your knowledge is your leverage, Tuck. Make sure they know what you're bringing to the table, and they'll be too greedy to let you go to waste."

Tucker let out a slow breath. "Even if you're right, even if they let me in without washing me, doesn't mean I'll be put in a position where I can help. Jazz won't be able to help me. It would raise too many flags and blow her cover. And with the number of people watching me, I'd blow my own cover if I so much as hacked my own computer to disable to spyware."

"That's why you need to earn their trust," Sam said bluntly.

Tucker groaned and looked at Danny. "Technus and I can keep hacking into their servers from here, man. We don't need to risk this. Seriously."

Danny glanced away. "I'm not sure that's true," he mumbled.

"What? They didn't actually catch Technus, did they?"

Danny looked back at him and shook his head. "No, but he's running into more blocks every day. Jazz can't make him a back door. You can. And…and the more we can find out, the better. We need more than one person on the inside, and you could establish a reliable communication link for us. Please, Tuck."

Tucker swallowed. "If it doesn't work," he croaked, "if they wash me, I'll…. It wouldn't just be an act anymore. I'd be ready to destroy you."

Danny smirked. "I'm used to the feeling."

It was a lie, or at least the nonchalance behind it was. Tucker knew that. Lying was what Danny did, even now.

"Just feed us what you can," said Sam, ever the practical one. "We won't act on everything, and we'll double check what we can before we do act. We don't want them thinking they've got a mole and feeding out false information to catch them."

Tucker's mouth twisted. "They wouldn't bother with that. They'd just wash everyone for good measure. No skin off their noses. They're too indoctrinated themselves to know the difference."

"Information," reminded Sam.

"That information's gonna have an expiry date," Tucker muttered. "It wouldn't save me forever."

"It doesn't need to be forever. It just needs to be for long enough."

"But what if it's not?" Fine. He was scared. He could admit it. He was _terrified_. Danny and Sam wanted him to waltz into the lion's den and play double agent. If he wasn't washed, he could be tortured. Or just plain shot.

Or the Guys in White might realize what he was up to and use him to lead his friends into a trap. That was by far the worst option, but it was also the most likely, whether they washed him in the end or not. What if they extracted what information from him that they could, washed him, and fed him that information back? He'd _happily_ use it against his friends then, and it's not like he'd wind up in close enough contact with Jazz for her to tell.

And even if she could, there's no guarantee she'd find a way to send a message. Her communications with them were spotty at best. His going in wouldn't improve that, not when he had to keep his distance from her to maintain both their covers. Come to that, they wouldn't even be able to assure her that he _wasn't_ a traitor, and he wouldn't blame her for thinking he might be once his information proved to be good. And—

And he was thinking about this as if it were already a done deal, risks and all.

Sam reached over and squeezed his hand, which was a big deal, considering she wasn't big on the showing her feelings like that after so many years of hiding what she felt for Danny. He would have taken more comfort in it if he didn't know it was a futile attempt to balance out her not-so-comforting words. "We'll do what we can and make the best of whatever happens."

Danny didn't say anything. He just waited for Tucker to make his choice known. Danny wouldn't make him go in, not even with everything that was at stake. Sam would try, but Danny would let him make his own decision, even if 'making his own decision' included a few dozen guilt trips and pleas before it was actually decision time.

Like it was now.

To say going in was risky was a major understatement, but they couldn't afford him not going in, either. Danny was right: they needed more than one person on the inside, and not just in case Jazz got compromised. They were short allies and needed more information. Anything he could do would help them…until they caught him.

Tucker sighed and looked at Sam. "Maybe you should take a harder swing at me, just to help sell the whole traitor thing."

Sam grinned and cracked her knuckles. "I'll just pretend you're Agent W," she said, and she was on her feet and a fist was flying towards his face before he could change his mind.

He woke up in the ruins of the Nasty Burger with some pickpocket wannabe rifling through his jacket. He could still feel the hard lump of the flash drive sewn into his collar, so he hissed a warning at her and let her get away with her appropriated beef jerky. It was the best he could do for her now. Besides, if they believed him, they'd feed him at HQ, and if they didn't, a lack of food was going to be the least of his problems.


	3. Paulina

They were well hidden in this alley; even Paulina had to admit that. It was narrow and deep, strung out between two apartment buildings, and Paulina knew for a fact that the cameras that were normally focused on this location had been turned off. If they were quiet enough, no one would realize they were there until it was too late.

She and Star had ventured into one of the new cities, clothed in their best so they wouldn't be given a second look—something she'd be disappointed in if that wasn't the point of it all. This particular outfit wasn't exactly something she'd have been caught dead in Before (too plain, too _common_), but now, anything that wasn't stained or patched or otherwise mended meant it was valuable. Shades of white were preferred, of course, but anything clean would do. Those in the walled cities could afford clothes like this, just as they could afford other luxuries those on the outside could not.

Really, the frayed clothes they were typically reduced to wearing—distasteful but necessary, given the need to conserve resources and the difficulty of acquiring new clothes—would have drawn too many eyes, too many questions. Someone would have reported them for no reason beyond their worn clothing. In their disguise, however—courtesy of clothing they'd managed to swipe for themselves on a previous run, one that had been less about blending in and more about outright stealing—no one gave them any trouble.

It meant that this time, they were ahead of schedule. This time, they could feasibly make it out of the gates before they closed for the night. It also meant Star felt comfortable taking the time to tally their supplies before they risked heading back. She didn't want to risk missing something important. That had happened on previous missions, for reasons varying from forgetfulness to being recognized. They rotated the cities they hit for the last reason, rotated which pairs were sent in for each mission, but this was something she and Star were good at.

They went more often than most, despite the risk.

Even when their mission went long, even when something unexpected came up, they always managed to return.

Paulina was counting on that reputation of dependability now.

She took a swig of water from her canteen. Hiding in the shadows while Star sorted everything back into their packs was doing little good; the rough brick didn't even feel cool against her back.

In truth, she was nervous. They couldn't afford to wait much longer. Star was nearly finished, her pack already slightly larger than Paulina's, but—

It wouldn't matter in the end.

Paulina unclipped the disguised transmitter from her belt and raised it to her lips. "Now," she said.

Star's eyes snapped to hers. "Did you see something?" She shoved a roll of gauze into Paulina's bag, set at her feet, and a jar of fruit into her own. She didn't need to watch what she was doing; she'd done it enough times that she could practically pack by instinct. "I thought we'd gone dark."

Fenton had ordered radio silence except in the case of an emergency, but Star already knew that, so Paulina didn't answer. What Star didn't know was that Paulina hadn't been using the emergency frequency. She didn't need to. They'd be coming soon, and then Star would be able to play at this new role with her.

"Paulina? What did you see?" Star asked uncertainty, but she was already thinking the worst even if she wouldn't admit it. She'd stopped packing and was giving her full attention to their surroundings, scanning for signs that something that was out of place.

Signs she wouldn't find.

They were too well hidden.

Light bent, shifting at the mouth of the alley and shimmering into perception. Had the pattern been more random, it would have been easy enough to write off as waves of heat rising from the pavement.

Instead, Paulina watched Star's eyes widen as she realized their exit had been cut off.

"Move!" Star shouted, dropping her pack, grabbing Paulina's arm, and starting in a dash towards the dumpster, no doubt hoping to use their old cheerleader training to reach the fire escape above. They'd done as much in the past. These missions required athletic skill as much as stealth and unobtrusiveness.

Paulina let herself be pulled along as three Guys in White stalked towards them. She didn't need to look to know that one was readying a syringe.

Star vaulted onto the dumpster and reached down for Paulina, who stared at the sticky surface in disgust. The smell was enough to make her gag, and the flies—

"Come on," Star hissed urgently.

As Star's eyes flicked over Paulina's shoulder towards the advancing GiW, Paulina grabbed Star's outstretched hand.

Then she pulled.

Even after everything, Star hadn't been expecting it. She overbalanced, hitting steel and then asphalt with a shriek.

The Guys in White reached them before Star could scramble to her feet. Agents Q and C grabbed Star by either arm and hauled her up, suspending her off the ground so she swung as she struggled.

"You traitor!" Star screamed as Agent Epsilon drew up alongside Paulina, syringe in hand. "How could you?"

Paulina's lip curled. "You can thank me for saving you later." Star would understand her motives soon enough, and she would understand the necessity of going back, just as Paulina had. They'd be late getting back, but this wouldn't be the first time they hadn't made it out before the gates closed, and it wouldn't be the last. The others would worry, so Paulina would risk sending a message tomorrow, claiming that they'd heard news of a supply shipment and were lying low. Security always increased around delivery times, and they'd been caught inside during unexpected shipments before, too. While the others might be wary at first, they'd relax once she and Star returned and appeared to be their normal selves. They would let their guard drop, just like they already had around the ghosts who had them so completely fooled.

The ghosts wanted humans to fight amongst themselves, wanted their numbers to wane as the number of ghosts swelled. Not all who perished would join the ghosts, of course, but too many would be twisted into abominations to ignore. Most humans, even those who stood with the Guys in White, were ignorant of that little fact, the possibility never crossing their minds, and the ghosts would never advertise such an advantage.

Paulina knew how true it was, though.

She'd seen it herself.

It still made her sick to think how she'd once adored Phantom, how she'd fought with Fenton in the aftermath of the Merge.

She knew better now.

Before Star's bloody scrapes healed, so would she.


	4. Subject P070504

A/N: Not sure if anyone's still reading this—I've been focusing on other fics because this one seemed to be mostly for me—but just in case, here's another piece of the puzzle.

* * *

He had been injected with so many chemicals, he wasn't sure there was much of his humanity left anymore.

Had he been a mere human, he would have been long dead.

He'd never thought he'd wonder if that would be easier than surviving this, especially when he knew what was in store for him if they were successful.

The experiments seemed endless. Trapped in a prison of phase-proof plastic, he had quickly realized they weren't going to afford him any dignities his human side demanded. No food, no water, no bucket.

His initial protest on this had reduced him to living in filth until his cage had been cleaned simply for the sake of getting samples for further analysis. Or perhaps they had merely moved him to an identical chamber in an identical lab. By the time they'd deigned to act, he'd been too weak to protest in his human form; survival instinct had forced him to change.

They'd been counting on that. He had no sense of how long he'd been in the thermos, so he couldn't be sure. He hadn't had a real sense of time for ages now.

The fluorescent lighting never dimmed. They'd given him nothing but different cocktails of drugs for—weeks, months, years?—since his capture. The scientists never spoke to him, ignored him when he tried talking to them. An endless parade of unsympathetic drones.

Staying in ghost form had become a necessity of survival, which was of course exactly what they'd wanted.

He was more useful to them as a ghost.

Whenever they needed samples from him or intended to begin another experiment, the cell would become electrified. He'd tried staying next to the walls at first—plastic was an insulator, after all—but the electricity they fed in through the floor or ceiling would invariably arc to him.

It was always painful, but they never blinked at his screams.

He wasn't human to them.

He was just a ghost.

His screams didn't matter.

He had some idea of what they were doing. They tried to keep the actual data away from him, coding files and chemicals on paper and on their computers, but he'd watch them as closely as they watched him. They seemed to have a few goals in mind. To find an easier way to sedate him. To find a way to control him. To extract the properties within the ectoplasm that gave him certain powers and mimic those powers with their technology.

He knew he wasn't the only ghost here—couldn't be—but as he was likely the only halfa, he was the most valuable to them. They might not acknowledge his human half, but they needed it. He was an example of successful ecto-integration.

He knew, if his conditions ever began to improve, that it would be their way of preparing for a new slew of tests. He wouldn't be able to stomach real food anymore—not solids, anyway—but if they started giving him something to strengthen his human half….

That would be when they thought they had sufficient data on his ghost side to begin looking at the transition point.

They would try to force him to change. They would try to take a mid-morph sample. He was all too aware of what measures they might take to achieve such ends, and he didn't have a defense.

All he had was entirely too much knowledge of what would come.

He needed to get out of here, but he didn't know how. He'd analyzed every corner of the lab—everything he could see, anyway—without coming up with any promising possibilities, and no one who came in here seemed the least bit sympathetic, so it wasn't like he could count on help when it came to escaping.

He didn't want to give up.

He didn't want to give in.

But right now, it seemed like continuing to exist was the only way to fight back. Holding himself—his sanity—together in spite of everything they tried. Fighting for that last scrap of humanity within him. Remembering what it was like Before—not just back when he was still free, but back before the world had descended into this chaos. Before the Merge and the lies the Guys in White spread in their effort to climb to power. Before the Ghost Zone was destroyed, before the entire world believed in ghosts, before humanity saw it as an _us_ versus _them_ situation instead of even attempting to coexist. A time when the GiW organization was nothing more than a secretive branch of the government, before they had ever seeded agents across the world in a series of fringe organizations….

They had taken power so quickly.

It had been all too easy for them to whisper that the current heads of government, in whatever nation, were unfit to handle the threat of ghosts, and they had gathered more than enough evidence to prove that they were up to the challenge of handling what they called a new threat. It had certainly seemed that way in the beginning, ghosts all over the world suddenly popping up in places where they had once lived, trying to carve out their own little corner to haunt. Most of them merely wanted to live peacefully, to leave well enough alone and be left alone in return, it had only taken a few fools who blatantly sough power to turn the tide of the already-fearful public against all ghosts. When the GiW had captured these ghosts, people had followed them, and they'd gained power, and—

Sometimes, he wondered if there was more that he could have done to stop it.

He hadn't really taken them seriously. To be honest, he'd thought them fools. He hadn't genuinely feared that something like this might happen.

Pride comes before a fall.

He should have known that he would fall this far, this hard.

He closed his eyes and drifted.

That was better than following this line of thinking to its end.

Waiting, drifting, existing….

The soft _shhk_ of the automatic door alerted him to its closing. He couldn't always hear it—they had a way of selectively soundproofing his cell, a feat he had yet to figure out how they'd managed—so if they were willingly alerting him to their presence, it wasn't time for a surprise dose of their latest chemical cocktail.

Another study, maybe.

Perhaps more poking and prodding or, worse, cutting and sample-taking.

He opened his eyes, knowing from past experience that feigning ignorance would only result in an electrified cell.

He blinked, but the girl who stood in front of his cell didn't vanish.

She was in the same white uniform they all wore. She'd donned a lab coat, carefully snapped shut, and held a clipboard. A pen was stuck behind her ear, and she wasn't wearing gloves—very sloppy, that—and for all that everything fit, it all seemed very…contrived. She wasn't wearing a name tag—they didn't always, preferring to carry their identification in an interior pocket where their subjects couldn't see—but he couldn't imagine that the others didn't know of her connection to him.

Why had they allowed her in here?

Had…had she asked to come?

Had she been furious when she'd learned the truth about him?

"Valerie?" he whispered, his voice sounding thin and reedy. Sickly. He cleared his throat. "What are you doing here?" That was better, sounding more like his old self, but—

"Subject P070504." She spoke quietly, and he knew the steel in her voice shouldn't surprise him, but— "It's time for you to come with me."


End file.
